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tomerico

3,152 karma · joined April 26, 2009

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tomerico··on Researchers discover molecular difference in autistic brains
Didn’t whole internet get angry for Trump’s administration publishing a warning that Tylenol during pregnancy may cause autosim?
tomerico··on Political trolling twice as popular as positivity, study suggests
The counter argument is that Black Mirror is an insanely popular TV show that shows exactly what technology innovation could bring - but again, from a dystopian perspective.
tomerico··on The Document Culture of Amazon
Can you share the tool name?
tomerico··on Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
If this is rare enough, it could fall into the false positive rate of the COVID test they've previously done (i.e. while the test said they had COVID, they didn't)
tomerico··on We are publishing the tax secrets of the .001%
Another point is that $500k is not in the 1% everywhere. In the Bay Area, it wouldn’t even put you at the top 5%.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/01/upshot/are-yo...

tomerico··on Once a bastion of free speech, the ACLU faces an identity crisis
Note how you have just did exactly what you criticized ( “silence legitimate criticism of others” by dismissing those that called out cancel culture)
tomerico··on Hundreds of fishing vessels vanishing along Argentina’s waters
Good thing that India doesn’t use this logic (Indian Ocean)
tomerico··on Hundreds of fishing vessels vanishing along Argentina’s waters
That’s a different argument than cost.
tomerico··on Israel reports link between rare cases of heart inflammation and MRNA Vaccine
Just noting that if you had COVID already, there is no need to get a vaccine, even for international travel.

Most countries that restrict travel to vaccinated people accept either a positive antibody test result or a positive COVID test result.

tomerico··on World Now Likely to Hit Watershed 1.5 °C Rise in Next 5 Years
India's women fertility rate is already below replacement level if you consider the gender imbalance.
tomerico··on Life after an internet mob attack
Agree. Reddit has a unique ability among large social networks to bring up sanity and good discussion. If there is misinformation being being spread I'd expect information disputing it to be in the comments 90%+ of the time. (Except for the niche subreddits as you mentioned)
tomerico··on App Store Arguments
Google play store is less restrictive than Apple’s.

With that said, I find the argument weak - it’s hard for me to believe that sideloading will be a big share of the market, as it hasn’t caught on in areas where a google is restrictive (e.g. adult content).

tomerico··on Out of control San Francisco shoplifting forcing Walgreens to close 17 stores
1) there has not been police officer death in SF in 15 years [1]

2) Unlike most professions, police officers enjoy qualified immunity which prevent civil charges from being pursued in all but most extreme cases.

tomerico··on Taking sex differences in personality seriously (2019)
The problem with this perspective is that for each scale you measure people (e.g. how fast they can swim) a different set of traits contribute (e.g. shoulder width, torso to height ratio).

This means that you don't have a set of super humans that extraordinary at everything, but that for any arbitrary scale, the group with higher variance will tend to be over represented at the extremes.

tomerico··on A whale who tried to mimic human speech (2014)
Interesting watch. TL;DW - Apes like Koko were raised by trainers who did not perform rigorous scientific measurements and were prone to bias. Research on Apes became immoral over time, hence less recent examples exist.

The most recent and rigorous study is on a bonobo, where communication is done using touchscreen with buttons saying words (lexigrams). Even in this case interaction seems to be limited to “give me an item” or “put item in box”.

tomerico··on Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020
I agree that the tone of replies matter, but flagging comments spreading misinformation seems like a positive thing.
tomerico··on Newark cops, with reform, didn't fire a single shot in 2020
I disagree. The largest factors are likely to be culture (coming from leadership) and higher scrutiny (mentioned in the article as a requirement to report and investigate any use of force).
tomerico··on The first 18 months of a startup
Do you also ignore online reviews on movies, restaurant, products, etc.?
tomerico··on Whimsical Guide to Compensation
Using your numbers and their formulas, this is what I get:

    Base      Stocks     Total
  1 $55,000   $32,746    $87,746
  2 $68,750   $53,048    $121,798
  3 $85,938   $85,938    $171,875
  4 $107,422  $139,219   $246,641
  5 $134,277  $225,534   $359,812
  6 $167,847  $365,366   $533,212
  7 $209,808  $591,892   $801,701
  8 $262,260  $958,866   $1,221,126
  9 $327,826  $1,553,362 $1,881,188
tomerico··on Venus could have been habitable for billions of years (2019)
The problem is that Venus is missing important ingredients for life. Most notably is the lack of hydrogen.

If you are interested in learning more on hypothetical approached of terraforming Venus, I suggest reading this Wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Venus#Biologic...

tomerico··on Tinder Experiment: Gini coefficient is 0.58 – worse than 95% of global economies
This is a pseudo-science article commonly quoted on incel sites. The "data" is based on claimed interviews with a small group of women.

When you look at studies that used real messaging patterns on a dating website, you can see that people tend to message other people of similar "desirability".

See for example figure 3 in https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/8/eaap9815 : "Both women and men tend to contact others who are ranked somewhat—but not excessively—higher than themselves."

tomerico··on John Cleese Sells the Brooklyn Bridge as an NFT
You could generate a signature that proves that you have the private key associated with the address
tomerico··on Why the new USPS mail trucks look so weird
They publish their revenue and expenses numbers [1]. The marketing mail junk revenues are around $150 per household, and equals to two pieces per day per household.

So it’s a lot of junk as you said, but it’s also a lot of money. I’d wager that less than 10% would pay that $150 annual fee for an “ads-free” model.

[1] https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/1113-...

tomerico··on The Roblox Microverse
The important thing about Roblox is that it's part of a larger trend of platform that enable a competitive creator environment that bubble up the "best" content to the top (like TikTok, YouTube, and Reddit). Roblox does it for games, and perhaps in the best way we've seen so far.

This perspective can also give us a sneak peek into will replace Roblox in the future. If you look at the YouTube --> TikTok transition, the main differences are that TikTok's content is entirely recommended, and that the content itself is more shorter (i.e. faster to trigger the dopamine response). The new gaming platform will likely be similar - a faster, quicker experience that will initially cater to kids but will eventually capture adults as well (and the content will evolve to support that).

Side note: It's absolutely incredible how much the comment section here is filled with parents either complaining or seeking validation for their ways of raising their kids. It shows how the transition to digital consumption is polarizing and challenging to our conventional wisdom.

tomerico··on National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence's Final Report
I wonder how many countries today are not in war simply because of fear of retaliation from the USA.
tomerico··on The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly
The problem is that NASA is designed around long term and expensive projects. At one point, a fast iterating company like space-x will surpass their achievements.
tomerico··on Square buys $170M worth of bitcoins
Bitcoin is vulnerable in two ways:

1. The oldest (and largest) wallets directly stored their public key on the blockchain. This would mean that attackers could transfer money away from these wallets (many of them are dormant).

2. Relatively early, the blockchain shifted to only storing the hash of the public key, which seems less susceptible to a quantum computing attack. The risk in these wallets is that once you want to transfer bitcoins out, you need to temporarily publish your public key - this key is not stored on the blockchain, but might be stored by future attackers. In addition, at some point getting your private key will be so fast that the moment you publish a transaction request you'll many fake requests asking to transfer to another wallet.

The solution is likely a soft fork - new addresses that are quantum resistant (similar to how in the past Bitcoin moved away from public key address into hash). The trick is that this needs to be deployed before attacks exist, and people need to transfer their Bitcoin into the new wallets.

tomerico··on TikTok and the network effects of creativity
The most disruptive part of Tiktok is how it managed to dramatically reduce the "rich gets richer" effect of entertainment platforms. If you upload a video, TikTok will show it to other users even if it's your first. This allows them to assess it and progressively grow its audience. On YouTube and Instagram you'd have to rely on search traffic or external sources to build up your audience and get recommended (except for the new Reels / YouTube Shorts that are mimicking TikTok's UI).

I've done an experiment on the new year and created a video on a new account trying to catch people's attention (relevant to the new year, funny, with something unusual). I've done i on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. On TikTok it gained over half a million views, with 0 views on YouTube and Instagram.

Another way to frame this is around the Gini Coefficient of these platform. TikTok has a much lower inequality measure, which increases the incentives to produce content and hence the quality of content.

tomerico··on Jacquard by Google
If the clothes could somehow tap into your smartphone battery and processor that would have at least made the whole thing simpler to use. As it stands right now, you need to have a separate “tag” that you charge separately and connect to your phone wirelessly. At that point you might as well wear a smartwatch or similar.
tomerico··on Jacquard by Google
This is one of the Google projects that I'm surprised still exist. The new technology here is integrating touch sensors into fabrics. You can see examples on the website of clothing and bags.

The main problem is that it's just that - a touch sensor. You still need a separate device that will contain all the other pieces - processor, battery, IMU, connectivity, etc. Once you make that device and wear it - you might as well integrate the input mechanism into it, why bother with using the fabric?

Better yet - integrate a screen into it as well, do you don't just have an odd, input only device, but you can actually see what you are interacting with. Oh wait - at that point you've just re-invented the smartwatch.

Can someone enlighten me on what is a killer use case that is actually better served with the Jacquard technology?

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